Reading Wendy Moffat's exciting new biography of the great E. M. Forster, and it is revelatory. With access finally granted to the great novelist's private papers, including a diary of his whole sexual life, the centrality of Forster's queerness, both to his biography and his writing -- and to the long silence after A Passage to India -- is here made undeniably clear, and all the more moving for what we may only now know.
(How this book makes me wish we might have the papers out of Henry James' bonfire, an unexpurgated record of Whitman's cabbies, Byron's autobiography, etc., etc.)
Clearly, I'll have to read Maurice again!
O, dear, have you forgotten that Maurice is godawful? Read that collection of short gay stuff they put out by Forster. I can't remember the name of it. But do, of course, rewatch the movie Maurice, as it is wonderful and sexy.
ReplyDeleteI am delighted that you are reading my book.
ReplyDeleteI think Richard is referring to The Life to Come.
Wonderful to hear from you, Wendy!
ReplyDeleteWe will be reading "Maurice," good or bad, for Seattle Gay & Lesbian Book Club in June. (I don't remember being terribly fond of it, but Ms. Moffat's book has inspired me.)